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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29063706">mr. know-it-all had his reign and his fall (at least that is what his brain is telling all)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/highfunctioningsociopath'>highfunctioningsociopath (RUNNFROMTHEAK)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>wires [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abusive Relationships, Angst, Angst and Feels, Depression, Drug Withdrawal, F/M, Flashbacks, Introspection, Lonely Sherlock, Lukewarm is probably the best way to describe it, M/M, Mary Morstan is not a good or bad person, Memory Palace, No Beta We Die Like Sherlock Keeps Trying To, No Hug Scene (Sherlock: The Lying Detective), POV Sherlock Holmes, Past Mary Morstan/John Watson, Pining Sherlock Holmes, Post-Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective, Psychological Trauma, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes is Bad at Feelings, Sherlock Holmes is a Bit Not Good, Sherlock is a Mess, Sherlock's Mind Palace, Sherlock's Violin, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, implied past suicide attempt, she's very grey here</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:33:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,500</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29063706</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/highfunctioningsociopath</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>—and fuck he wants a hit. He wants a cigarette. He wants to burn, wants to make his lungs burn until they bleed and wants to make his heart race until it falters and falters and stops and John Watson isn’t in danger so it won’t restart.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But they took his heroin. They took his cocaine. They took his back-ups and his stashes and his back-ups’ back-ups and his cigarettes. They rationed his nicotine patches and removed his ability to satisfy his temptations and itches and cravings.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hateful. Despicable. Dreadful.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He picks up his violin, his beautiful violin, and he wants to smash it. Wants to splinter it against the wall, wants to rip it apart grain by grain until his hands bleed. Until his skin is riddled with splinters and he can think of something other than sentiment and yearning and craving.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He doesn’t.</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>Sherlock's just trying to cope.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes &amp; Mary Morstan, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>wires [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>mr. know-it-all had his reign and his fall (at least that is what his brain is telling all)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>S4 is still breaking my heart so have angst. &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He takes a sharp inhale, feels the stab of fractured bones protest—</p><p><em>“What are you doing?!</em>”</p><p>
  <em>Furious eyes the only clear thing in the fogged mess of his brain. Strands of gray curling round his doctor’s forehead tiredly, the strong cut of his jaw stronger for the fury it contains. Culverton’s laughing, he knows this as he knows Culverton’s a serial killer.</em>
</p><p><em>John’s laughing too, in that cruel way he never had before. Faith—</em>real Faith—<em>is a riot of high-pitched giggles floating around his head airily, mocking and cutting and real if distorted.</em></p><p>
  <em>“Wake UP!”</em>
</p><p>—and exhales messily. As messy as air can be, that is, separated from his typical and routine cycling of carbon dioxide and oxygen while at rest. Pointless. Tedious. Irrelevant.</p><p>His transport begs to differ, rather insistently given his treatment of it over the last half-year.</p><p>Mycroft’s schedule of babysitters hadn’t planned for this time period, the odd hours dubbed the Middle Watch by the Royal Navy. Four hours alone, hatefully quiet, an itch in his arm he has no way of satisfying. Wiggins drawn away by the lure of green bills and the threat of bullets to his useless brain. Cameras and locked doors and sealed windows with motion sensors. <em>Obvious</em>. Dull. Predictable.</p><p>John had initially been assigned he’s sure, a midnight shift until a decent hour, Rosie safe in the care of his for-now sober sister, but after Mycroft’s review of hospital tapes, after Lestrade’s careful conversation with Sherlock and admittance that John had told (“<em>He said he hit you. Said he hit you hard</em>”) that name had been removed. Revoked. Tabooed.  </p><p>Deleted, from all but his memory.</p><p>With Mrs. Hudson away for the night at her sister’s, with Molly tired from her turn, with Lestrade at a crime scene, with Mycroft off doing Mycroft things (boring, superficial, pompous, <em>prat</em>) they’d been forced to offer him a modicum of privacy.</p><p>Not that it’s remotely private, what with all the hidden cameras he’s too tired to search for, but he can pretend.</p><p>Pretending, after the months (<em>years</em>) without John Watson is something he’s become quite adept at.</p><p>He’d pretended John would be <em>delighted</em> to see him, relieved even, when he’d dressed as a waiter and ruined a proposal with his heart in his throat and bile slow-creeping behind it.</p><p>He’d pretended it was for a case, with a needle in his tux pockets and his armor on as he’d walked away from the most important worst day of his life.</p><p>He’d pretended to be Sherlock Holmes of before, albeit with a tad more care for niceties and politeness and boundaries. Thus the isolation and no-contact-for-a-month while John and Mary enjoyed their blissful sex vacation and shagged each other to the cadence of Sherlock’s misery.</p><p>He’d pretended to be selfless, when every bit of him screamed to <em>take take take </em>and stop giving. To stop marking his sewn-up skin with their burdens, to stop giving up John and not <em>care</em>. Sentiment, a curse truly, because his only made him miserable. Irate. Distracted. Dull. <em>Tedious</em>, he thinks. Shakes. Itches.</p><p>Sherlock never would have pretended before. He wouldn’t have given a bloody shit, would have stomped over Mary’s lies with sadistic glee, would have unleashed every acerbic word until she broke in façade or patience, until she slipped up and launched at him with bullets or fists, and he would have <em>delighted</em> in taking her down a notch.</p><p>(<em>You’ve killed too now, right? Names and bullets and scars and marks of theirs. Dirty nails, skin red from washing your hands until the water marked it too. Mary’s killed who knows how many people, but you’ve killed who knows how many too. You hid in a hidey-hole in your mind palace and let your body do the rest, let your fists carry a variety of armaments, let your eyes take in and know and end. You let yourself go to a far more dangerous drug than cocaine, retreating so deep no interrogator could find you. Mary probably has scars, but you have more. You read her files, her names and lies and blood-soaked fortunes and medical reports, and you know. You’ve had worse. You’ve done similar, but without an offer of compensation. You did it for sentiment and she did it for fun, and honestly, you’re both pretty terrible people. Dark and dangerous and wrong. But she’d made him happy in ways you couldn’t, so you’d forgiven. You’d ignored. You’d helped John forgive, and played third wheel at their request. You’d become her friend, and you’d locked your feelings up with Moriarty and forced his warnings down too—</em></p><p>You always feel it, Sherlock. But you <strong>don’t. have. to FEAR IT!</strong></p><p>—<em>because losing side. Defects. Useless chemicals and artificial things you’re supposed to be above. Tasteless things you shouldn’t crave, shouldn’t yearn for, but somehow do. Pathetic. Wrong. Deplorable. Unforgiveable.</em>)</p><p>But they’d come to an understanding. One a-bit-not-good-inhuman-human to another. <em>John Watson</em> as an understanding. A warning. His happiness, secured with his family, at any cost. And she’d come to care for him once that understanding passed, once she realised he didn’t care what she did to him or did with John (<em>lies, you always care, you always crave, you always—</em>) so long as John was happy. So long as John was content.</p><p><em>Just like that? </em>She’d asked him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. They’d been in an abandoned warehouse, one of his many retreats to stay away from Mycroft and John and Lestrade and sentiment and all his weaknesses. Of course, she'd brought that weakness to his door with a swollen belly and a ring on her finger.</p><p>Sherlock had sighed, had winced, had gripped his chest and cursed and wrapped a hand around a liquor bottle he’d pinched off Mycroft a few days before and chugged.</p><p><em>Just like that,</em> he’d answered in a flat tone. She’d circled him, like a shark scenting blood, and he’d forced himself to not bleed.</p><p>
  <em>You’re in love with him, aren’t you?</em>
</p><p><em>Does it matter? </em>He’d muttered. <em>It never has before.</em></p><p>Mary had frowned, eyeing his bandaged heart with some regret. She’d cared for him, in her own way, but she’d boxed that affection into a tiny box with a neat little bow. She could separate it from herself, in a way Sherlock had never been able to.</p><p>
  <em>Why help me? Why have John come back to me, when you have him entirely now?</em>
</p><p>Sherlock had laughed, a bitter, broken sound because he’d been just a tad bit pissed and he’d been in pain and refused painkillers and forced a detox and ditched John a few hours before with a phone battery in a garbage somewhere and his screen shattered after one text to Mary.</p><p><em>If you think I’ve ever had him entirely, </em>he’d said, <em>then you aren’t half as intelligent as I know you are.</em></p><p>(Not actually gay. Not his date. Not a couple. Not gay. <em>Not</em> gay. Not his.)</p><p><em>He loves you</em>.</p><p>Obvious, he’d almost said, wanting to drown himself in the smooth pools of bourbon until he choked, until he drowned the way his captors hadn’t dared to drown him. He'd drank more, drank until the bottle spilled liquid down his throat, wet and uncomfortable and damning.</p><p><em>He’ll come around</em>, Sherlock had muttered, <em>I’ll talk him round.</em></p><p>An echo of their first understanding, before the lies. Before the reveal. Before the bullet.</p><p>A bullet signed with love, a near miss out of sentiment and guilt.</p><p>(You don’t tell John, Mary says it while he’s delirious, while the room spins and the walls are colored in reds and blacks and oranges. You don’t tell John, Sherlock.)</p><p>
  <em>Do you actually forgive me, or are you just saying that for John’s sake?</em>
</p><p>He’d snorted.</p><p>
  <em>My forgiveness doesn’t matter, Mary. John’s happiness does. He loves you, so he’ll have you. I swear it.</em>
</p><p>An understanding. A mutual love, the sun by which their planets rotated. They became friends because they had nothing else to become. They couldn’t hate each other, and they couldn’t kill each other, so they became friends.</p><p>They boxed up their resentments and locked it with a key they lost, and it had been fine.</p><p>Until Sherlock killed her. Until she’d picked the wrong moment to care, and had relaxed the tight knot around her box of Sherlock-sentiment. Until she stole his death and cared for the wrong person.</p><p>He’d never really hated Mary until she’d died.</p><p>For one moment, cold and shaking, John’s broken howls echoing the aquarium walls, shaking the shark’s water, Sherlock bleeds. Sherlock hates her. Sherlock <em>despises</em> her.</p><p>(My friend, she’s under my protection. My city. My streets. Protect. Whatever it takes.)</p><p><em>Even</em>. Like he’d cared for tallies. Like he’d cared about the bullet scraping his aorta, teasing one of his lungs. Like he’d cared that he’d been pronounced dead. Like he’d cared she’d been the one to put him there.</p><p><em>The two people in the world who love you the most,</em> he’d said to John.</p><p><em>My first and last vow,</em> he’d said to them both.</p><p><em>Whatever it takes</em>, he’d promised.</p><p>Norbury. A surprise. Preparation, mind palace whirling: Mycroft berating him, Molly crying, John knowing without actually knowing, because the John in his head knows more than real-life John can ever be allowed to know.</p><p>Then, a thud. A bullet. A whiff of copper stains that aren’t his, the salt of tears in warm eyes. His hand on his wound on her body. His bullet through her heart in damn near the same place her bullet had hit his.</p><p><em>John</em>, he screams at her through his panic. <em>John. John. John</em>.</p><p>And she just smiles, just bleeds blood that isn’t hers to bleed, and tells him that she loves him with her eyes. She cares for him, like she cares for Rosie. But it’s the <em>wrong</em> moment to care. It’s the <em>worst</em> moment to care, because he’s the only one meant to be lost. He’s not meant to lose, <em>John</em> isn’t meant to lose.</p><p>
  <em>You made a vow.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Anyone but you.</em>
</p><p>Hatred, acid in place of warmth and fondness and sentiment <em>and</em>—</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock’s squinting, shaking, terrified out of his mind because it has let him down. Because his deductions have failed him, he miscalculated, he doesn’t know John like he once had and he doesn’t know what is and isn’t real anymore.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No one is laughing. John hits the scalpel out of his hand. John knocks him to the floor. Still, no one laughs.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock wonders if he’s supposed to.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Is THIS a game?! This a BLOODY game?!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock crumples, focusing on the traitorous sting of bruising, the fleeting comfort of John’s warmth against his cheekbones.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>One more strike, brief as a caress. He slumps further, and John’s foot greets him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He hadn’t planned for this.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His ribs ache, kidneys probably protesting the violent abuse of mountains of drugs followed by this. He can feel his bones creak uncomfortably under John’s anger, before his righteous fury. Sherlock knows this is deserved, and this isn’t his first beating by far, but it hurts as others hadn’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The words he can’t quite recall but knows the taste of, the feel of, bloom on his skin, coloring with each point of contact, solidifying with each strike.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John is pulled away, and Sherlock’s still trying to understand. Still trying to make the world clear, to see his deductions in their entirety rather than the fragments his eyes are too slow to piece together.</em>
</p><p>—and <em>fuck</em> he wants a hit. He wants a cigarette. He wants to burn, wants to make his lungs burn until they bleed and wants to make his heart <em>race</em> until it falters and falters <em>and stops</em> and John Watson <em>isn’t</em> in danger so it won’t restart.</p><p>But they took his heroin. They took his cocaine. They took his back-ups and his stashes and his back-ups’ back-ups and his cigarettes. They rationed his nicotine patches and removed his ability to satisfy his temptations and itches and cravings.</p><p>Hateful. Despicable. <em>Dreadful</em>.</p><p>He picks up his violin, his beautiful violin, and he wants to smash it. Wants to splinter it against the wall, wants to rip it apart grain by grain until his hands bleed. Until his skin is riddled with splinters and he can think of something other than <em>sentiment</em> and <em>yearning</em> and <em>craving</em>.</p><p>He doesn’t.</p><p>Sherlock doesn’t break his violin.</p><p>Instead, he lifts it to his shoulder, rests his chin on it. Feels normal, for a moment. Lifts the bow to it, middle finger on third string.</p><p>It hums, wretched, so he corrects his stance and tries again.</p><p>It trills, beautiful and harmonious, and his heart beats to it. Despite himself, he thinks of John, thinks of his—</p><p>
  <em>“No,” he murmurs softly, bent over and feeling his transport ache. Blood pools in his mouth, bitter and metallic. It’s real, so he doesn’t spit it out. “It’s s’okay. Let him do what he wants. He’s entitled.” </em>
</p><p><em>Sherlock’s world is still so detached, so distant and fake and choked with cocaine spirals</em> <em>and sweat-stained panic</em>.<em> He lifts his head, every bit of his trembling and aching and shaking and </em>still<em> longing for John and sees.</em></p><p>—another screech. He winces, slowing the draw of his bow across the strings. Adjusts his fingers carefully, relying on muscle memory and dusty wings in his memory palace. He lets the ghost of his grandmother’s voice guide him, hears her guide him through Chopin. Nocturne, in sharp c minor.</p><p>Another cut, slow and steady and painful, each note a palpitation, each sound a broken whimper he can’t let out. A crescendo, mounting and mounting <em>and mounting and—</em></p><p>
  <em>He sees the words, even as his brain shreds them for his protection. He sees the words, and what they look like in John Watson’s eyes. Because he doesn’t know when John would have stopped, were it not for the intervention. Sherlock wouldn’t have stopped him. Not for this.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I killed his wife,” whispered like a confession.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John delivers it with acid, cold and biting. Opposite of how he’d been before the fall.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yes, you <strong>did</strong>.”</em>
</p><p>—the noise, broken and half-completed, sounds like a sob.</p><p>But it isn’t the violin, it isn’t his beautiful instrument so long abused by disuse. Freshly polished but long-since untouched, still corrupted in his memory by that waltz he’d composed to the notes of his mourning.</p><p>It’s him. His throat, his tongue, his mouth.</p><p>His heart, his lungs his tears.</p><p>Cameras watching him. Watching every shrill, unintended note of longing. Of repression. Of loss. Of guilt and self-pity. Of grief. Cameras listening to him. Listening to everything. Every fragment of himself aired to the world at large.</p><p><em>Oh, how the mighty have fallen</em>, Moriarty might sneer. <em>Boring. Just like everyone else.</em></p><p>His handlers absent.</p><p>His best friend banned, his imprints still bruising on Sherlock’s pale and sickly skin. The sweat and shakes of withdrawals still ransacking his body. Scars still there, refusing to heal.</p><p>Emotional. Physical.</p><p>
  <em>Caring is not an advantage.</em>
</p><p>Obviously, Mycroft. Obviously.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>if you like this fic and want to support me + my writing feel free to check out my <a href="https://runnfromtheak.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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